


Shoal of Pandyssia

by kryptic



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Christmas gift, F/M, cutesy drabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:32:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2843135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kryptic/pseuds/kryptic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daud loses one of his favorite books. Callista finds it and reads all of his notes, and Daud tries to get it back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shoal of Pandyssia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Serindrana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serindrana/gifts).



The leather of its cover might once have been soft and supple. The strength and quality of the binding revealed the volume to be one of quality, and a glance at the publishing date would show even more explicitly the craftsmanship with which it had been made. This particular copy of _Shoal of Pandyssia_ had managed to weather over 50 years of apparently vigorous use by its owners.

Its leather cover was cracked and discolored, its pages yellowed, spotted, and creased. Messy notes were scrawled in the margins, and a dozen little slips of paper fell out onto its finder’s lap when she opened the book. Yet, nowhere was a dog-ear, a rip, a tear, a missing page, or indeed any sign of misuse by the reader whatsoever.

She picked up one of the notes and unfolded the thin paper, quartered over to fit within the pages. Smoothing it out with her slender fingers, she began to read, but stopped short almost immediately. Callista Curnow was amazed to find that the note was written in another language. Glancing once again at the cover of the book, she guessed that the writing was likely Pandyssian, though she’d never heard of anyone besides laureates of the Academy being fluent in it. Strange, considering that the muck of the Old Port District was still stuck to its cover. She had never heard of an academic wandering down there for a pint, and was hard pressed to imagine a man like Piero or Sokolov carrying reading material like this to the pub with him.

Curious as to the identity of its owner, Callista flipped to the filler pages at the front of the book and perused them until she found a mark. There was no name or indication of the man whose library this had come from – that would be too simple. Only a small, capital letter “D”, enclosed by a neat rhombus, gave a sign as to whose hand this had fallen from.

A bit put out – she had wanted to return the book, clearly so beloved, to its owner – Callista returned the note paper to the pages as best as she could and took it along with her to her room at the Hound Pits.

☼

While the sun rose into the sky, he stared with bloodshot eyes at the ceiling. Knowing he should be sleeping, he shut his eyes and tried to clear his mind. In less than thirty seconds, frantic thoughts brought his eyelids shooting open again, rendering his attempt at sleep little more than a long blink. It had been a long night on surveillance down at the waterfront; he was sore, and more than a little crotchety. But keeping him awake was the fact that he’d brought some reading material along with him to the Old Port District and had no memory of carrying it back when he returned. All he knew was that it wasn’t in his coat now, and it wasn’t on his bedside bookshelf.

Which wasn’t to say that he couldn’t have misplaced it somewhere else around the Flooded District. It could be downstairs near his desk, or stolen by one of the assassins who didn’t know whose favorite it happened to be. All of Daud’s better instincts told him that, even if he _had_ lost it while he was out, it would benefit him more to get at least a few hours of sleep before he went out to look for it. He’d been up for more than a day straight, and as much as he tried to make the men believe that he was a superhuman with no need for sleep, his aging body was beginning to protest the long, restless nights.

Once again, he tried to let himself slip out of consciousness, but memory of that book kept him awake. Where had he last seen it? It was in his hand as they left the Flooded District; he’d read it periodically while the other men took watch. After that … Had he had it with him when they left? He couldn’t remember putting it on the shelf at home, but returning books to their rightful place was such a basic reflex that forgetting was understandable.

Shifting in his bed, he flung himself onto his side and tugged impatiently at his sleeves, trying to get them to sit without pinching at his arm. No matter how hard he tried, however, there was no sleeping. Errant hairs tickled the back of his neck, the sun shone too brightly into his face, the image of his own handwriting in the margins of the book flashed into his mind’s eye.

“Goddamn it…” he growled as he finally rolled out of bed.

Daud felt how bloodshot his closed eyes must be as he rubbed them with the heels of his hands. Shuffling like a Weeper, he went to the bookshelf by his bed to check for the book again. Not there.

With a groan, he flattened himself on the floor to peek under the bed, where _Shoal of Pandyssia_ also was not. He checked the chest at the foot of his cot and the one downstairs, as well as the locked desk. A pulse was beginning to race in his extremities as the book remained missing.

Sighing in exasperation, he snapped his fingers and pointed two fingers at the moldy carpet in front of him. Billie appeared with a sweeping bow and tilted her head curiously at him.

“Master?”

Daud fixed her with a fiery stare and his deepest, most imperative voice.

“Bring the men. All of them. Now.”

☼

It was against her very private nature to snoop in other people’s business. A well-reared young woman, Callista had been raised to conduct herself with propriety and discretion. It would be against her nature to read a stranger’s personal writings – if there were not one other, essential quality to her.

Callista Curnow was curious. Her thirst for information was what made her such a good governess. Above all, she prized information about those who sailed the seas, and what lay beyond.

And what lay beyond was … the _Shoal of Pandyssia._ Not only had the book literally fallen into her lap, but the writing inside of it, left behind by the previous owner – it was Pandyssian. That meant that they had either been there, or met someone who had. The degree of separation between her and a real sailor, between Callista Curnow and the open sea, was as narrow as a single being.

Her fingers were taut and hesitant as she did it, but she did it all the same. The notes came slowly sliding out again as she loosened the cover. Once again, she looked at the owner’s mark – the D and the diamond – this time tracing it with her fingertip. The ink was old, once black, but now beginning to brown, and soaked into the light yellow paper so that she could see the stain spreading out through the minute web of fibers.

Swallowing her better nature, the lecturing voice of her mother in her ears, she unfolded one of the notes and began to read what she could -- as much Gristolian as the author had put down.

_“The author either confuses word order here or gets his Pandyssian from an unfamiliar dialect. The former is much more likely, as the Pandyssian supposedly recorded here seems to mimic Gristolian syntax. In the Pandyssian language, the subject is rarely emphasized in this manner.”_

Below was more Pandyssian, completely illegible to Callista. However, she could see what whoever had written this was getting at. There were two sets of sentences on either side of the paper, each containing more or less the same words, albeit in a different order. Arrows were drawn between the two, contrasting their arrangement. All arrows pointed to the right side, heralding what the note-taker thought to be the correct composition.

Whether or not he was right, Callista could only guess. Not knowing what his credentials might be to make such a claim, she had to take his words entirely on blind faith. However, she thought that the book’s owner truly must know _something_ of Pandyssian, considering that he had filled _Shoal of Pandyssia_ to bursting with notes and corrections.

Reading his criticisms, however, was entirely useless if she hadn’t read the rest of the book. Tucking the piece of paper into the section where she thought it might belong, Callista began to read from the very beginning.

 **SHOAL OF PANDYSSIA** , read the title page. **By JOHN A. RICHARDS**.

Beneath the author’s name were already scrawled a number of notes, including the man’s date of birth, his credentials (apparently from a university in Tyvia rather than Gristol’s Academy of Natural Philosophy), and, curiously, his home address.

The introduction was nothing more than a long, dry retelling of the book’s publication process. Callista skipped somewhat impatiently to the first chapter, titled Journeys on the Western Coast. There was no scarcity of notes even here, some two paragraphs past the first page.

> Our captain guided us past the straits and into a sheltered cove, where the tides that had plagued us since we had first lost sight of Gristol’s shores were finally calmed. It was in this pacified water that we were at last able to take stock of our provisions, and to assess all that we had lost in the arduous journey across the sea.

> The first thing I noticed was the absence of my more delicate measuring instruments – and this being no coincidence, either. When first light had dawned the day after our storm, I felt a queer pulling in the area of my chest, and a deep pressure in the rear of my brain which told me that that particular suite of tools had been lost. Putting aside all foolish notions of divinity and the superstitions that plague Gristol’s lower classes, I must assume that I saw them tossed overboard sometime in that long, terrible night, and sustained a blow to the head which erased my memory upon the next day.

Here was handwritten a short note by the owner of the book. Somehow, Callista imagined that she could hear his voice through the letters, dripping its dry sarcasm into her mind.

 _Sure you did,_ the memo read. Alone in the tower, the governess laughed.

>  Only in my subconscious mind did I still hold the remembrance of losing that fine collection of mechanics, crafted for me by one M. F. Blanch from the ribs of a bull whale and chased in gold, impervious to rust or tarnish. But such luxuries are beyond the care of men such as myself, and while the measurements will surely take longer to produce accurately by hand, I would not count myself among Tyvia’s fine class of intellectuals if I could not complete them without the help of those tools.

  _This could explain the inaccuracy of some of his later statements. The loss of tools_ and _the insufferable helping of pride, I mean. Find Blanch, investigate these instruments. Also find out why he chooses to make them from whalebone. Any particular reason?_

The constant notes almost made Callista feel as though someone was reading along with her as she digested the first chapter. It was a comforting sensation, especially as the ongoing trouble in Dunwall made her feel more and more isolated from the world. Even Havelock and Cecelia, whom she had begun to consider her friends, seemed increasingly distant with each passing day. No doubt they were preoccupied with their own personal troubles, and Havelock especially with the Loyalists’ impending operation at Coldridge Prison.

 As she stood up to light a candle in the gathering gloom, she noticed a peculiar pain in her cheeks, one that it took her a moment to recognize. Raising a hand to her face, she massaged the aching muscles with her fingertips. Sore from smiling.

 In these dark times, there was no such thing as too much smiling.

 ☼

“Are you really expecting us to do this?” Billie asked, her voice soft enough that no one but Thomas, who stood to their immediate right, might hear it.

“I’m not expecting you to do it,” Daud answered with his voice cracking like a whip, “you _will_ do it. And if you don’t, you’ll need a new place to live. On second thought, maybe not even that.”

 “Outsider’s salty balls,” she breathed in exasperation, and Daud could see her rolling her large brown eyes in his mind’s eye.

 That was her final protest, however, as she turned to the men and began to relate to them what Daud had said. One squad would sweep the streets of the Old Port District, two more the rooftops. The others would range between their stakeout location and the Flooded District itself, checking every square foot within ten yards of their traveling route. Each and every one of them had already been grilled by Daud himself, who demanded to know if they knew anything of _Shoal of Pandyssia’s_ whereabouts since the Old Port mission.

 His powers allowed him to see past their words into their minds and seek the truth, and the truth in turn horrified him. Not a single one of them knew where it was, not even an inkling.

 So it was that he found himself scanning the dusty, haphazard cobblestones of Old Port in broad daylight, his hands thrust deeply into his pockets. Retracing his steps had never worked for Daud in the past. Truth be told, his own forgetfulness was one of the reasons he insisted that his gang run by such precise clockwork instructions and routines. It was humbling to see one of his shortcomings best him again, and in so seemingly frivolous a way.

 But his mother was from Pandyssia, and so was that book, and so that book was, in a way, his mother. Daud hadn’t bothered explaining it, not even to Billie, because he knew that she would never understand. The poor wretch hated her mother.

 Just as he was becoming lost in his melancholy thoughts, the assassin’s head snapped up at the sound of crashing glass. It was distant, yet unmistakable, as was the sound of two human voices that followed. One, indecipherable, he could only tell was a woman’s. The other, a man’s, was lower and just barely made the journey to his ears so that Daud could sift out a few of the words.

 “Does not befit … going out … neglecting your station … my lord … would not allow it.”

 Following his natural instincts, he crept closer. It wasn’t clear whether or not these people had anything to do with his lost book, but they were in the area, at least. Mostly, he gravitated towards the sound the way that pianists moved their fingers when they listened to music – because it was what he had trained himself to do.

 Gradually, the voices faded, but not because they were getting farther away. There was a wall of some sort blocking them; Daud was certain of it. The place where he had heard them was already pinpointed in his brain, a little red X on the map of his mind.

 The little open yard where the argument had taken place was completely blocked, by water on one side and buildings on all three others. It was a simple task for Daud to transverse onto a rooftop, where he could at last glimpse the pub which stood barricaded so completely. That in itself was worthy of interest, and there was no better time to investigate its residents than the present.

 He shot the roof tiles with his fingers and watched an assassin appear beside him.

 “Master,” burbled the anonymous mask with a gesture and a nod.

 “Go and mark this location on the map in my office. Note that it’s fortified. The residents might not be civilians. Jot that down wherever the fuck you want, long as you know I’ll see it.”

 Without another word, the grunt – name not important – had disappeared.

 Left to himself, Daud began to stalk the open yard from rooftop to rooftop, like a jungle cat pacing its territory. There were not many signs of movement, but many signs of life. Windows were open, not boarded up or even closed. Both full and empty whale oil tanks lay strewn about the yard, and he would bet that at least one of them had glass still warm to the touch.

 And there, in a little tin-roofed building that was barely more than a shack – movement. His eyes, like a shark’s, made out motion before they could see color or shape. Daud drew closer, dropping down to the ground and crouching on the moist dirt. Through the doorway, he could spy the source of the movement, a poor excuse for a man, clad in clothes almost gone to rag, and bent over a work table to fiddle with some contraption. Though it had been years since he last saw him, the assassin would not forget a face. Piero Joplin.

 Then there was something going on here, something far beyond a few Dunwall citizens scrambling for shelter. For a moment, Daud allowed himself to hope that a cure for the plague might be forthcoming, or some other kind of order to combat the city’s chaos. But that moment was short-lived.

 He moved instead past Piero, this place becoming just another mark on his map to investigate later. Whatever they were doing here was not his current concern, nor was it particularly pressing. The city had long since gone to shit – it would keep overnight. The same couldn’t be said for his book. The fragile bindings conjured themselves into his mind, images of the pages fluttering, detaching, and floating away. Paper touched the boggy ground of Dunwall, was spat upon with acid by a river krust, or sailed away with the rising tide.

 Something like dread climbed into his throat, a very uncommon feeling for one such as him.

 Daud blinked to the roof of Piero’s workshop to attain a position from which he could scan the Hound Pits settlement without notice. A slight shift in his concentration, a muttered word, and his pupils dilated to impossible size – not the physical ones, but the pupils of his mind’s eye. Shapes sprang into sight as if they had always been there, like a rubbing done with bright and shimmering colors that revealed the relief below.

 Now, with these forms pressed upon his vision, he began to swivel, taking in all details, searching for the book’s familiar shape. In the process, he counted the light of at least six people, with other illuminated beings too far away to tell apart. Only one was isolated from the others, raised like a princess in the highest room of the tallest tower. This also happened to be the only horizontal figure, its posture suggesting that it might be reading … a book. _His_ book. He could see the shape now, yes, the angle making it slender, hardly visible to someone who wasn’t directly looking. But now he was.

 Without a second thought, he imagined himself up through that distant window, and vanished.

 ☼ 

So much for just having a peek inside. Callista’s eyes were glued to the page, her stomach rumbling in protest at missing her last meal. She was going to get jittery in a minute, and cranky, but the needs of her own body were secondary for now. The book represented the needs of her mind and those of her heart, needs which were too often neglected.

The binding crackled ever so slightly as she turned a page. Fearing she had put the book under too much stress, she cradled it in one hand, supporting its spine like the neck of an infant. Though it pained her to consider, she came to think that perhaps she ought to stop reading, at least for now. In any case, there were chores to do and meals to eat, both of which she had been neglecting for too long.

 She had just shut the book, using her finger to hold her place until a suitable bookmark could be found, when suddenly a strange change in pressure sent needles through her eardrums. There was a sound like all the air was being sucked from the room, and when she turned her head to see the source of the noise, an inky, billowing cloud stained the air.

 From the darkness emerged the form of a man. Although she could not place his name in a moment, the scar on his face, the blood-red coat, the deep frown lines, the scrap of metal belted to his waist, all put an icy fear into her core. She was frozen solid, unable to speak or move. Callista Curnow only watched in dread as the man stepped forward, and looked down at the book in her hand.

 “You have something of mine,” he said.

 It was not his words that allowed the governess to break her silence, but rather the sight of his eyes. Of all his features, they were the only one that made him look human, dark green and soft like moss, like grass, like leaves. At the moment they caught her own, she could release the breath she had been bottling up in her lungs and relax her body from its petrified state.

 “You’re the D. The D and the diamond. It’s _you_ —“ There was a second where she racked her brain for the name – she’d seen it on the wanted posters so many times, even before the empress was killed. For the life of her, if she could only remember the _name_ …

 “Daud,” he said.

 His voice made her shiver and seize up all over again. That was how she expected an assassin to sound, in every dream and daydream. Cold, raspy, quiet and dead. She knew he was right. This was Daud, the second most wanted man in all of Dunwall. Would he kill her? If not for the book, only to keep her silent?

 With her finger still between its pages, she lifted the hand that held _Shoal of Pandyssia_ and offered it up to him.

 “I didn’t mean any harm by it,” she said by way of apology. “I just found it out on the street near here, and I couldn’t resist taking a look at it. If I’d known it was yours…”

 For a moment, she faltered, but the sight of his soft eyes studying the book’s cover spurred her onward.

 “Please, I just wanted to read it. I want to see Pandyssia one day, and this is as good as I’m ever going to get.”

 Callista had no idea what possessed her to say what she did next, but it popped out of her mouth all the same.

 “I read your notes,” she said softly.

 Her stare was glued to his face as she spoke. She saw his brows rise slightly, the frown on his face relax, then deepen. It seemed that now, he was the one struck dumb. With one gloved hand, he reached out and took the book from her, losing her place in the process. But he remained standing there, gazing at her like she was a foreign species.

 So this was the man whose words she had giggled at, and eaten up voraciously, and scanned over and over again, and wrung out for greater meaning. This was the companion with whom she had read one half of _Shoal of Pandyssia._ And now, she guessed, he was going to kill her.

 For the moment, it turned out that she had guessed wrong. Daud opened the book in front of her. Somehow, he managed to crack it open to the exact page upon which she had left it.

 “You kept them all in order.”

 She couldn’t tell whether it was a question or not, but she answered “Yes. They were very informative.”

 He raised his head and once again gave her that look, like he was staring at a singular being. There was no telling what thoughts he was thinking, but she could see them bubbling behind his eyes.

 Dread rang through her like the toll of a clock as he took another step forward. There was very little space between them now, enough for his sword to stretch through easily if he chose to draw it. Something urged her to step forward in turn, further closing with him. If she had to guess, it might be the desire to exercise some modicum of control over her own fate. If Daud was really going to cut her down, she didn’t want to die running. She would face her death head on, like Uncle Geoff would.

 “Don’t tell a soul that you’ve seen me,” he said. “And I swear on the Outsider’s black eyes, if you’ve so much as bent a page in this book, I will come back for you.”

 So he wasn’t going to kill her – not right now, at least. That was enough to make her breathe a sigh of relief, but as he turned to go, she felt the bond she had formed with that book tug right at her soul.

 “Please,” she said, and he turned back around immediately. “I was wondering if I could…” Spirits, she hoped this wasn’t going to get her killed. “… Finish the book?”

 His eyebrows went up again, and his eyes widened. A little twitch at the corners of his mouth gave her the impression that he was somewhat impressed.

 “And why would I let you do that?”

 “Because you’ve read it with me. You’ve been here, the whole time,” she said, indicating the book. “Besides, why would you make all those notes if you didn’t want anyone to read them?”

 They stood there in silence for what felt like a hundred years, the expression on his face unchanging. Her chest was beginning to hurt when she remembered that she should breathe. As she inhaled shakily, his hand rose, holding _Shoal of Pandyssia_ out to her.

 Their fingers brushed as she took the volume from him. She shivered.

 “I’ll be back for it,” he murmured in his voice like poison.

 But as he turned away, she once again caught the sight of his soft green eyes.


End file.
